


Blooms Beneath a Blood-Red Moon

by HopelessBanana



Category: Interview With the Vampire (1994), Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: BDSM, But it's there, Dom/sub Undertones, Hate Sex, Humiliation, Louis and Armand fuck and both of them are thinking about Lestat, M/M, Porn With Plot, Rough Sex, Seduction, Threesome - M/M/M, Unrequited Love, barely, most of the characterisation (especially Armand) is based on the musical and film, these vampires CAN bang!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-10-19 15:30:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17603990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopelessBanana/pseuds/HopelessBanana
Summary: The fraught and complex relationship of three men who loved each other, in some way, at least once, told through sex.





	1. Flicker

**Author's Note:**

> Anne Rice is going to find this and crash through my window in the dead of night and smother me with a pillow
> 
> I've taken a whole mess of artistic license with the later stuff because I'm still reading Interview With the Vampire, so stuff will be inaccurate compared to the books (I like to pretend half of it never happened anyway)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armand moves closer still, taking Louis’s hand and playing with his fingers, running his fingertips across his palm. “I can make you feel good, Louis. Forget the past for an hour or so, and concentrate on the pleasure of the moment.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a seduction

It’s only a couple of hours until sunrise, and Louis sits by the fireplace, staring into the flames. He longs to reach out like he might have seventy years ago, when the sky was still his and the light wouldn’t end him, to play his hand through the flames as if they won’t set him alight. Claudia is off somewhere, hunting, leaving him alone once again with his thoughts. It’s a strange, twisted joke, for a man who has no true need to breathe to feel so suffocated by regrets. He sees the yellow in the flames and remembers the brilliant gold of Lestat’s hair. Even now he’s gone, he can never escape him. Despite everything, part of him never wanted to.

The theatre is quiet around him, many of the vampires having settled down for the night in their coffins in the crypt. In a place filled with humans, he can still hear the soft sighs of sleep, the rustling of bedsheets as the living toss and turn in the night. During the day, the dead are truly silent. The only sound is soft footsteps down the corridor, then the creaking of the door hinges as Armand enters. Louis does not turn his head to acknowledge him.

“Good evening, Louis. It’s getting rather late, don’t you think?” Armand approaches, moving to sit cross-legged beside him, his hands folded and resting gently in his lap. Louis’s eyes flick over to him. It’s the sort of physicality that makes him think of a schoolboy playing the innocent after doing something wrong, knowing it’ll get blamed on someone else, but that goes for most things Armand does. The firelight compliments him. The shadows of his cheekbones are flattered, his copper hair shines golden where the light hits his curls.

Louis looks away. Armand reaches out to touch his cheek. “Something is troubling you,” he says. Vampire to vampire, his touch feels warm. He can’t help but feel drawn back to him, turning his head.

“This and that.”

Armand frowns, sympathetic. “Talk to me, Louis.” Louis lowers his gaze, tensing a little. He doesn’t say anything, his dark eyebrows knitted together. Armand cups both his cheeks. “Louis…”

“It isn’t something I’d like to talk about. I’m… reminiscing, I suppose.”

“You don’t want to talk about it but do reminisce?”

“It’s complicated,” he replies, looking back to him. Armand’s expression is curious but otherwise inscrutable. Louis never feels quite sure what to make of him.

Armand moves to face him fully, scooting around on the carpet. He looks like an angel, as per usual, with his pale, smooth skin and bright eyes. His lips are slightly parted as he observes him, head tilted incrementally to the side. “Do you need some kind of distraction then?” He moves into a kneeling position, sitting on his calves.

“A distraction?”

Armand licks his lips, leaning in a little closer. “I have my talents, Louis.”

Something like dread floods Louis’s chest, and he leans away, surprised. Part of him finds itself intrigued, though, by the slender line of Armand’s neck, his slim waist, can’t pretend forever that he hasn’t imagined what it would be like to touch him the way he touched Lestat once. But it feels wrong. Something feels wrong. 

Armand moves closer still, taking Louis’s hand and playing with his fingers, running his fingertips across his palm. “I can make you feel good, Louis. Forget the past for an hour or so, and concentrate on the pleasure of the moment.” He raises his hand to his lips and kisses it.

Louis feels something hot stirring in his gut, something warning but wanting. He can’t reply, gaping open-mouthed at him. “Armand, I can’t…”

“Why not, Louis?” He looks up at him through his eyelashes, kissing down his wrist, carefully pushing up Louis’s shirt sleeve. He’s alluring and beautiful and the room is warm enough that he’d already taken off his jacket and waistcoat, and it feels so strange to be so undressed with him this soon. Louis has been caught with his guard down. He swallows, one of those leftover human habits, and his throat feels dry. He could feed. Armand seems to read his mind, baring his neck, moving Louis’s hand to the buttons on his waistcoat. His fingers freeze there, resting against the mother-of-pearl, cool to the touch. Armand’s other hand goes to the nape of Louis’s neck, running through the baby hairs there. “Let yourself forget,” he whispers. “Drink from me, then make love to me.”

The weight of it all is heavy on Louis’s clouded, tired mind. He can smell the sweet, slightly metallic scent of the blood in Armand’s veins, singing to him beneath his skin. He moves his head closer, his lips finding purchase at the place where his neck meets his shoulder, just above his collar. It’s only a kiss, but it feels like the beginning of his undoing. Armand takes his hands to start undoing his own waistcoat, almost impatient. He shrugs it off in only a moment, the dark fabric dropping onto the rug, leaving them both in just their shirts. This isn’t a new situation, to be alone in a dark, firelit room with another man, to have his hands teasing across the surface of his skin, to feel the heat of his kiss. But he closes his eyes and sees Lestat beside him. And the thought is enough to break through his hesitation, his imagination carrying him away.

He pushes Armand gently to the floor, moving his collar out of the way to sink his fangs slowly into his neck. Armand gasps, his hair spilling out across the rug in a pool of molten bronze, his body arching up against his. Louis feels his entire body filled with the liquid heat of another vampire’s blood, the gentle prickling of Armand’s fingers pulling gently at his hair. He lets out a moan in his soft tenor beneath him, hooking his legs around his waist to pull him closer, head lulling back as his eyes close. Louis and Lestat had drunk from one another before: when he was made, in their closest moments when he felt his dead heart alive and brimming with love for him despite himself, after their most heated arguments, when the only thing stopping one from tearing the other to pieces was the glorious feeling of Lestat on top of him, beneath him, around him, inside him... It is not a new feeling, and he knows well the pleasure of being drunk from, the intoxicating lightheadedness. He can already taste the age of Armand’s blood, the centuries that have developed his flavour like a fine wine. He is young and old all at once, his skin plump beneath his fingers as they slip beneath his shirt, untucking it from his waistband, his blood ripe and powerful and old.

He withdraws his fangs, pulling back to look at him, but Armand has never been a patient man, and immediately tugs him back down to crush his lips against his. Louis can’t pull away. The vampire is magnetic, and he feels his draw the same as he felt Lestat’s. He feels Armand frantically undoing the buttons on his shirt, and pulls away his hands to give him room to maneuver it off his body, falling to the ground in a gauzy white pile. Then his hands move up to his back muscles, wandering appreciatively. Louis’s palms are pressed flat against the ground to support his weight as he hovers over him. “I want to drink from you,” Armand breaks the kiss to whisper in his ear.

Louis can’t help himself. He bares his neck. Armand flips them over, straddling his hips and takes his wrist, sinking his fangs into the soft flesh there. Louis stares up at him, his vision a little hazy, as all the heat in his body rushes to the point of the bite. He can feel Armand’s weight on his cock through his trousers, grinding softly against it as he shifts. His brain feels like static, the peripherals of his side darkening, overcome with sudden, intense euphoria. His body, immortal though it may be, always struggles to cope with the sudden loss of blood. Armand pulls his fangs out and licks the wound. His shirt is hanging open, baring his marble-white chest, not muscular per se, but defined. Louis moves his hands, steady despite the sensation of dizziness, to his nipples, and Armand lets out a low, wanting sigh. He shrugs off his shirt and moves to unbutton both their sets of trousers, shifting to kick his own off until he’s sitting perfectly naked on top of him.

He is just as beautiful as Louis has imagined. He is thin, but his hips and thighs are curved, his cock long and thin where it rests, half-hard on Louis’s abdomen. He reaches down to start pulling off Louis’s trousers, and he complacently kicks them off, until they are skin against skin. There isn’t an imperfection on either of them. Armand’s fingers wrap around Louis’s cock and he lets out a sudden gasp. “You’re thick,” he murmurs, thoughtfully, pumping him to full hardness. “I want you inside me.”

“Yes,” Louis breathes, eyelids half-lowered, all rational thought banished. All there is is the sudden, gentle squeeze of Armand’s hand around him, stroking, almost teasing him, the beautiful, orange-red of his hair, the deep brown of his eyes. His groin feels heavy, even as his hips buck instinctively into his palm. 

Armand lets go and stands, turning to march across the room and root through a drawer. His ass is perfectly formed and slightly rounded, accentuated as he bends over.

“What are you doing?” Louis asks, his baritone turning husky with want. 

Armand twirls back around, presenting a small bottle of oil, his expression almost proud. Oh.

“You keep that in the  _ drawing room _ ?” he questions, but Armand’s only reply is a cryptic smirk. He approaches again, laying down to hover over him and kiss him once again. The tips of their hard cocks brush together and Louis moans into Armand’s mouth. He hates this feeling of losing control, hates the power Armand holds over him, especially in this moment, but neither can he resist it, not when his groin is so heavy with desire, when he’s so close and so needy.

Armand sits back and unscrews the lid of the bottle, pouring a small amount onto his fingers. A drop spills onto the carpet, and if Louis were thinking straight he’d panic at the thought of ruining it. He rubs them together, licking his lips with a lusty smile, then reaches down to circle around his entrance, legs spread wide open. It’s quite the view. His finger sinks into his ass, and Armand lets out a quiet grunt, closing his eyes in concentration, letting his body adjust to it, before beginning to slowly pump in and out. Louis reaches for his own cock, stroking gently, almost absent-minded, and certainly unaware of his actions.

“I want you,” Armand gasps. “I want you to fill me up.” There’s something distant and disconnected in his tone that only barely manages to register in Louis’s mind. It’s overpowered by the sudden surge of lust as Armand adds a second finger. He mewls softly with each small thrust, his hips moving rhythmically alongside his hand, his gaze set on the floor. He wonders why he isn’t looking at him for a moment. “Please, I want your cock, Le-” His words are cut off by a moan breaking through, his eyes rolling back for a moment. Armand seems experienced, and in that split second, he slips a third finger in. Louis lets go of his cock to crawl towards him and kiss his shoulder. 

“Yes,” Armand says on a breath. “Come closer.” His free hand reaches up to thread through Louis’s hair, then it clenches into a fist and he lets out a yelp at the sudden pain. It feels good when he’s so desperately wanting. Armand lets go and pulls out his fingers with a pop, before shifting onto his knees and bending down to see Louis’s cock. “You’re so big,” he whines, excited. He kisses the tip, looking up at Louis as he does. Louis shivers. He wraps his mouth around him, cheeks hollowed out, eyes wide and sparkling with mirth, as if this is all some sort of joke. More likely, it’s a trap, and Louis has fallen right into it. But what could Armand gain from this, he wonders, even as he watches him effortlessly deepthroating him. The paranoia that always lingers at the back of his mind fights its way to the forefront for the first time tonight, as Armand closes his eyes to concentrate, and Louis finds his brain suddenly overflowing with terrible, frightening questions and a hundred different, equally horrifying scenarios. He was promised a distraction. What from?

Armand pulls off, grinning and wiping his mouth with his thumb, before reaching for the bottle once again. Louis watches carefully as he pours a little into his hand and shudders as he starts applying it to him, the terror not fading, but the thrill of what they’re doing heightened. Because, God save him, he’s  _ good _ , and he feels so hot and if Armand isn’t careful, he could cum before he even gets inside him. But Armand is careful, and moves back to lay down again, his legs spread wide for him, waiting. “Fuck me,” he commands. He looks like a spoilt prince commanding a servant, even in a pose that should be submissive. Louis has always had a problem when it comes to doing what he’s told, the polar opposite of most people’s. He doesn’t stop to question it until he’s already in the thick of it. That’s how he’s here in the first place. Lestat stepped into a tavern in New Orleans and from the moment he laid eyes on him, Louis was his. And now he’s gone, and he’s pressing his cock inside Armand, who’s writhing beneath him, his calves wrapping around his hips, and he’s tight and warm and the sudden burst of memory overpowers all of it, and he’s holding Lestat, touching Lestat. 

His thrusts are almost clumsy at first, but Armand’s movements against him help him find a rhythm. His forehead is buried in the crook of his neck, his breath coming in short pants, the friction between them building into delicious pleasure. He can’t help the moans that escape him, can’t help it when he imagines that Armand’s hands on his biceps are larger, his voice a note deeper, and he doesn’t register that Armand is calling Lestat’s name over the sound of it repeating in his own thoughts.

Suddenly, he feels himself being pushed back, and it’s Armand again, the image of him overlapping with Lestat’s in his mind, as he rides his cock. The curls bouncing around his shoulders are auburn one second and blonde the next, and Louis finds himself thoroughly disoriented. He doesn’t know where to look, can barely figure out what’s real, and squeezes his eyes shut to focus on the rocking of the body on top of him, the pressure around his cock. It’s fast and rougher than he expected, the sort of sex he and Lestat had had when they were mad at each other and Claudia wasn’t home. He can’t understand why he feels such dread in the small empty pit of his stomach - perhaps it’s how unplanned all of this was, the indignity of fucking on the drawing room floor without bothering to find a bed. He wants to stop and he wants more and he can’t move except for keeping his hips thrusting.

“Faster,” Armand snaps. Louis’s eyes shoot open. The image above him is Armand now, bending over as he rests his hands on either side of him for support. He actually slows down in surprise. “I said faster!”

He’s shocked, but obligingly picks up the pace. Armand groans in frustration and pulls off, grabbing his hand and sweeping the few trinkets on the drawers off the top. They clatter to the ground. A vase smashes. Armand doesn’t care, seating himself on the top and dragging Louis closer, grabbing his cock to put it inside him again. “ _ Faster. _ ” Louis braces himself against the wall and all of the debating inside of him is over. He starts thrusting, as fast as he can go, in hard, long strokes. Armand mewls, nodding furiously, biting his lip and fucking back against him. The drawers rattle, banging against the wall. He can feel a piece of the broken vase cutting into his foot, and he barely notices. His breaths stutter, start and stop.

“I’m gonna cum,” Louis mumbles.

“Not before I do,” Armand hisses, grabbing his hair again. “Touch my cock.”

He moves one hand to wrap around him, stroking up and down, his brain rattled as Armand cries out in pleasure, head resting against the wall, eyes up at the ceiling. He’s letting out short, sharp noises with each thrust, his ass grinding against the base of his cock and his balls, eyes fluttering shut. “Just a bit more,” he whines. “A bit more.”

Louis tightens his grip slightly and it isn’t long until Armand lets out a scream, the walls of his ass clenching around him tightly, a small trickle of cum leaking from the tip of his cock. That does it for him too, and he cums inside him, his forehead falling to rest on Armand’s shoulder. They both sit still and pant for a long moment, shaking with the aftermath. The piece of china in Louis’s foot begins to sting. He raises his head to look at him as the haze of his climax fades.

Armand’s eyes are still shut fast. His posture relaxes, and his face morphs into something like a smile. “Lestat…” he murmurs.

If Louis’s heart had still beat up until that moment, this would be what finally ended it. His stares at him, still as a statue, jaw dropped. Had he said his name out loud? What does he mean? Armand’s eyes open, and then his expression turns to horror of his own. “I mean… Louis.”

Oh. He hadn’t said it.

His brain begins to work again, ticking over like a clock. Had Lestat made Armand? No, he couldn’t have, he is younger. Did Armand make Lestat? Something tells him that isn’t right either. How could they know one another? Lestat is French, of course, he came from Paris - that’s the real reason he chose to come here with Claudia, not reclaiming his Creole heritage, no matter how many days he has spent laying awake in his coffin trying to convince himself otherwise. Were they lovers? Did Lestat abandon him? Lestat, who spent every moment with Louis and Claudia clinging to them to keep them close? That can’t be. Did Armand abandon Lestat then grow to regret it? He realises quickly his long silence is damning. His cock is still inside him. He pulls out and steps back, wincing as he puts pressure on the piece of vase. He leans down to pull it out. 

Armand sits on the cabinet with his legs swinging on the edge, Louis’s cum leaking out of him, his own splattered on his stomach. His hair is a mess. Louis is sure his is too. They’re both disasters. Louis starts picking up his clothes and dressing, as calm and collected as he can remain. “Louis…” Armand says softly. “I…”

“I need some time,” Louis replies, voice hard. He finishes buttoning up his shirt. It’s uneven, but he’s clothed. He grabs his waistcoat from where he’d left it hours ago on the back of the chair and shrugs it on. 

“ _ Louis _ , it was a slip of the tongue…”

“I need to be  _ alone _ ,” he snaps, moving to the door. He opens it with a backward glance over his shoulder. Armand has gotten down by now, looking dazed and confused as he stands naked in the centre of the room. Louis slams the door behind him. He didn't realise how quickly he would find out the truth anyway.


	2. The Brilliant Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lestat turns his head to spit on the ground. “Did you think murdering my daughter was the way to make us lovers?” he asks, softly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lestat/armand hatefuck enjoy

Claudia is dead, Louis is gone, and Lestat finds himself once again perfectly alone in the world, standing on the rooftop of the theatre, staring vacantly off the edge and wondering what it would be like to jump. But Lestat has made promises. He isn’t usually one to bother keeping them, but it is different when it applies to Gabrielle. The one promise he will always keep:  _ I will never seek to end it. _ She’d danced away from him, cloaked in a forest of Grecian trees, like a nymph of legend: beautiful and dangerous and wild. She had always been his, every boy believes his mother will always be his. That was the first time he’d ever felt existence as a completely solitary being. 

The stars twinkle in the velvet black sky, and he wants to reach out to rake across them with his sharp, glassy nails and tear them from the heavens.

There are quiet footsteps approaching. He hadn’t been paying attention. His mind is misty and distracted still. Lestat does not love without pouring his very soul into it. He is controlling and possessive and egomaniacal, and all that does is make him love more. Half of his heart is ashes, and the other half is scattered in pieces across the world, far from his reach.

Armand sits across from him, lowering himself down gradually, languid, slender limbs stretching out. It’s boyish and infuriating, and the smug grin on his face only salts the wound. “Why? Claudia meant nothing to you, why, Armand?” The words spill from his lips before he can stop himself, and he  _ knows _ he shouldn’t give him the satisfaction, but he’s always been a creature of pure, unadulterated impulse.

He leans forward. “For this moment. This… Beautiful moment.” He claps a hand over his mouth to stifle the giggle that erupts suddenly from him, his whole torso rocking back and forth with vengeful glee. Lestat bites back the urge to retaliate, standing silent and impassive as a rock. “You took everything from me, left me, when I begged you to take me with you. You thought I would help you? You thought I wouldn’t do  _ everything in my power _ to make you pay for it?”

His fingers twitch with the urge to clench into fists. He lowers his head, looking away from him. It’s only a moment before Armand is there beside him, fisting his hands in his hair, forcing him to look him in the eye. He’s breathing heavily, almost manic, some wild fire burning in his dark eyes, searching his face with a frenetic tension. Lestat grimaces at the proximity and the tugging at his scalp. Armand steadies, open-mouthed, letting out a deep breath, then laughing again. It’s a dark, sincere chuckle. “I won!” he shrills. He can’t seem to focus on one particular aspect of him. Lestat knows he looks a mess. His hair is lank and greasy, his skin sallow. Yet Armand looks at him as if he is the most beautiful thing in the world. It is deeply discomforting, unsettling him right to his core. 

He should have expected it when Armand presses his lips hard against his, moving one hand from his hair to the back of his neck, holding their mouths together. He tries to push him off, but he’s still too weak to make any real difference. It’s a long moment before he pulls back, and even then he’s still too close. Lestat turns his head to spit on the ground. “Did you think murdering my daughter was the way to make us lovers?” he asks, softly.

Armand’s face falls into the distraught look of a thwarted, petulant child. He tightens his grip on his hair and Lestat gasps. “I think it’s a damn good little slice of revenge.”

Lestat laughs, airy and bitter. “I think you’ve wanted me since you met me. I wouldn’t join your little cult back when we first met, and you hated that you wanted me but couldn’t have me, I wouldn’t take you with me to search for Marius, and you hated that the thing you wanted was searching out what you want most of all, and even now when you’ve taken what I love from me, I still don’t want you!”

Armand pushes him backwards, and the world rotates around him. He feels as though he’s swinging off the edge of a precipice, and with another few steps to the right, he might well be. He staggers as he tries to catch his balance, leaning against the slope of the roof to hold himself upright. Armand stands with his fists clenched in front of him, fuming silently. There’s a long, heavy moment of silence. Lestat could collapse underneath it. 

Armand takes a slow, deliberate step towards him. “Louis is gone. Your mother is gone. Claudia is dead. The violinist is dead.” Lestat still flinches at that. Nicolas’s loss still stings. It always will sting. It’s been years, but the memory of him is still fresh in his mind, still the foundations of all his mortal experience, because he loves Louis now with a radiant passion, loves him in a way he doubts any song or poem could really encapsulate, but there isn’t a moment he can remember not loving Nicolas. “I’m the only thing you have left,” Armand snipes. He takes his arm and trails the back of his index finger up his bare skin, underneath his sleeve. It tickles just enough to make Lestat shiver, against all better judgement.

“Not the only thing,” he replies, steady.

“What? Will you talk of pride? Dignity? I don’t see that you have much of that left now, either. You came begging me for my blood, remember? Regardless, we are far more similar than I think you’d like to believe, Lestat.” He says his name in a low, breathless hiss. “Neither of us are ever happy unless we’re being loved and attended to. We’re  _ perfect _ for each other.”

“I’m not talking about pride, Armand.” He smiles a little more brightly than he feels, and Armand looks up at him, doe-eyed, looking more like a youth than a man, as he tends to in his most vulnerable moments. Oh, he’s certainly not a child, he’s centuries older than Lestat, but part of him will always and forever be stuck as a petulant teenager, never to learn that he can’t always get what he wants. Right now, he’s carries the indignant expression of being thwarted at the last hurdle.

“If you say you hate me, it’s still  _ me _ you hate. I’m the only thing left-”

“Except for Marius,” Lestat cuts in. Armand’s body tenses into perfect stillness. He is like a statue of an angel, carved into the stonework of a church, except for the stunned expression on his face. “If I call him, he’ll come to me.”

The silence continues, pervasive. It seeps into every crack in Lestat’s broken body. “You’re a liar,” Armand says, with a false confidence that rings clearly as untrue.

“I’m not lying. I found him, Armand.”

His brows knit together in restrained anger. “No. You didn’t, nobody can…”

“We spent time together. I drank from him. We spoke of many things.”

“ _ Lies _ .”

“We spoke of you.” Armand had raises his hand as if to slap him, but it stills in mid-air. “He called you his crime. The greatest crime he ever committed against his own kind.” Armand sucks in a deep breath through his nose and rears back, before following through with the slap. The force is enough to knock Lestat to the ground, cracking his head against the floor. He sprawls helplessly there, groaning as his vision distorts and darkens.

Next he knows, before he can process it, Armand is on top of him, straddling his waist. “Lies. He  _ loved me _ !” he roars, beating his fist into the ground beside him. Lestat can only laugh. He’s waiting for him to throw him off the roof in a tantrum, waiting for him to hurt him again, because by God nothing could hurt him more today than what already has. Then a spot of blood drips onto the front of his shirt. And another. Armand is crying. Good. Let him. His fingers drift over on top of Lestat’s hand. 

Lestat tugs his hand back, laying there, dizzy from the blows. Armand slumps down on top of him, sobbing into his chest. “I love you,” he gasps.

Lestat shakes his head, staring up at the sky. “No. No, you don’t.” Armand punches him in the chest, and Lestat sits up suddenly, instinctively, enough strength left in him. He flips them around, pushing him down onto his back, and hovering over him, eyes dark with fury. “You don’t love  _ anything _ , Armand.”

He lets out a soft, devastated whine, staring intently at him. Then he loops his arms around his neck and pulls him down to kiss him again. This time, Lestat finds himself not resisting. Armand is soft and pliant, and Lestat is only a shadow of who he was before Louis left him. “I hate you,” Armand whispers against his mouth.

“That’s the first honest thing you’ve said,” Lestat bites back. Armand leans up and kisses his neck once before biting. Lestat lets out a strangled cry of pain, surprised. Oh, it feels good, of course it does, but he’s terrified. He’s going to kill him right here, before Claudia’s ashes have even cooled. Then Armand pulls back, licking at the blood from the wound, and he lets out a sigh of relief, turning his head to look at him in surprise. Armand is studiously attentive, but Lestat’s already weakened body feels utterly drained. He shivers as the laps of his tongue turn to kisses, working their way up his jawline to his mouth again, and he kisses back. He can’t figure out why he does. It just happens, like snow falls when it’s cold, like civilisations collapse and tear themselves apart. 

Armand pulls back, taking Lestat’s right hand, where he still wears his sharp, silver thumb ring, and presses it to his own wrist with a low gasp. There’s a small trickle of blood coming from the tip, and Lestat stares up at it, every part of his body screaming for him to  _ drink drink drink _ . He attempts to lunge forward for it, but Armand snatches his arm back. “You still want my blood? After all of it?”

“I hate you,” Lestat sneers.

“Hate me then. We can hate each other. But what I’ve done was revenge, not payment.” He glares up at him, his hair fiery in the light of the tall gas lamps on the street beneath them. “So what will you give me, darling?” He flutters his eyelashes, and extends his wrist.

Lestat turns his head away, rolling off him. Absolutely not. Every part of him is bitter and resisting. He won’t give him what he wants. But Armand is relentless, crawling over to lay on top of him like a lover, curled up across his stomach, with his bleeding arm draped across his front. “I’m yours for the taking, Lestat. And let’s not pretend part of you doesn’t want me. You love to hate me. That’s why you came here. If you met Marius, why didn’t you go to him for help? Were you ashamed? Were you frightened? Or did you really just want me after all?”

He can’t come up with anything coherent to say. “You want me, Lestat, yes you do.” He sits up and scoots nearer, stroking his face with his right hand, the picture of innocence above him. He moves his left wrist closer to his mouth. “You just have to take me.”

The smell of it is so close and so strong. He can already taste the power on his tongue, and he can’t help himself. He reaches out to grab his wrist, lapping at Armand’s blood. With every drop, Lestat feels strength returning to him. He can feel his body ablaze with it, his exhausted limbs filling with life again, his fragile bones renewed. Armand lets out a long, high moan, melting against him. He sounds utterly wanton, and the new energy coursing through his veins means it evokes a reaction in him. He pulls his mouth away, eyes landing on Armand, who smiles brilliantly. His teeth and face are so perfectly white in the moonlight, fixed against the darkness of the sky, interrupted by the auburn flashes of his hair. Lestat surges up and kisses him.

Armand’s fingers find their way to his hair as he responds, open-mouthed and sloppy and needy, clambering into his lap. He rolls his hips against him, and Lestat groans, kissing down to his jaw and Adam’s apple, sucking at the skin there. Armand lets out a quiet whine. He sounds like a whore and looks like an angel and he’s the very embodiment of the devil. His head is tilted back, and he grabs Lestat’s hands to rest them on the effeminate curves of his hips. Lestat squeezes, rough and angry. He shifts to undo Armand’s trousers, working clumsily at the buttons. Armand is similarly occupied with Lestat’s. They tumble onto their sides, and Lestat lets out a gasp as Armand’s hand wraps around his cock, his mouth latching onto his jaw. He bites, gently this time, not breaking the skin, as he pumps him. The motions are jerky, and it’s almost painful, but right now the pain is cathartic. Lestat brushes his fingers down Armand’s length, trying to tease him. He bucks his hips up against the flat of his palm. “Don’t fucking do this by halves, Lestat. I’ve waited too long to have you,” he hisses. He pushes him over onto his back, rutting against him on top of him, the lengths of their cocks brushing against each other. 

“I hate you,” Lestat whispers, clutching at a fistful of Armand’s hair.

“Yes, yes, I hate you, too, darling,” he replies, malicious and condescending, and Lestat can’t stand it. He tries to sit up, only for Armand to slap him across the face, gentler this time, just enough to heighten how  _ good _ his cock feels against his, and Lestat retaliates by smacking his ass. Armand yelps, his mouth hanging open. He leans down to bite Lestat’s lower lip, dragging his teeth across the inside. His fangs tear through the flesh as they go. Lestat can taste Armand’s blood and his own all at once, and it’s delicious and frightful and exhilarating. His hips buck up against him, and Armand shifts to position his cock between Lestat’s thighs, moaning as he slips into the gap. So Lestat opens his legs, kicking out to push him off. He falls, catching himself on his bleeding hand, letting out a sharp cry of pain.

Lestat kneels up, glowering down at him. “Suck my fucking cock, then I’ll fuck you like a bitch,” he spits. 

Armand stares at him for a moment, wide eyed, then his gaze drops down to Lestat’s hard cock. He isn’t quite as large as Louis, but it’s thick, with a gently upwards curve. He licks his lips and moves closer, breathing out as he runs the tip of his tongue along the side. “You think that’s a good idea? Letting me put your cock in my mouth? I should bite it off.”

Lestat grabs it and slaps him across the face with it. He lets out an indignant shout. “You’ll do as you’re told.”

“You think you can humiliate me? I could have you begging on your knees for me if I really tried,” Armand replies.

“I think you like being humiliated,” Lestat sneers. “You like someone else in control. That’s why you let Marius fuck you-” Armand reaches up and tries to slap him again, but Lestat catches his arm this time. He falls forward, grabbing at the shoulder of Lestat’s shirt. If he’d fallen further, he might have sent them both toppling off the side of the roof. “Suck my cock, Armand.”

He acquiesces, falling almost docile, turning his head to lap his tongue against the head. Lestat remains unexpressive, even as he’s hitting the most sensitive parts, even if the warm wetness of Armand’s mouth is bliss. That lasts until he takes him fully into his mouth, and Lestat can feel his cock sliding down the back of his throat. Armand doesn’t even gag, just looks directly into his eyes. Even on his knees with a cock in his mouth, he looks victorious. He stutters out a groan, fucking into him, rolling his hips, and Armand seems to take it with ease. His lips are slick with blood and saliva, and he’s  _ talented _ , so talented.

For a second, he wonders what might have happened if he’d let Armand come with him to find Marius, or if he’d stayed with him at the theatre. Might he have loved him? Or at the very least, might they have had  _ this _ , fraught and passionate, blood and lust and sex in an endless parade of hedonism? Armand is a beautiful man, especially so with his cheeks hollowed out and his hair mussed and his clothes rumpled. Lestat wants to humiliate him. He wants to put him in a dress and rouge his cheeks and fuck him from behind. He wants to slap him and hurt him and make him scream with pleasure while he buries his cock in his ass. Possibilities spill out before him, and the only thing to bring him back to reality is Armand’s needy while. He looks down again, and Armand is stroking himself. He reaches down to swat his hand away. “You’ll wait until I’m fucking you,” he hisses.

Armand pulls his mouth away with a pop, a long string of spit and precum hanging between his lips and Lestat’s cock. “Why don’t you make me then?”

Lestat shoves him back down, tugging off the rest of Armand’s trousers. His legs spread easily for him, raising his hips. Lestat reaches over to press his fingers into Armand’s mouth. He lets out a noise of muffled surprise. “Lick.” He does, his  _ oh so talented _ tongue getting to work, slicking up his hand before he draws it back suddenly and puts a finger inside him. Spit is not an effective lubricant, and Lestat can feel even from his end that it’s rough going in. Armand raises his hand to his mouth and bites down on the fleshy heel of his palm with a soft sob. But Lestat is relentless, pressing in and out, and Armand is moving his hips along with him. He doesn’t wait long to add a second finger, slowly scissoring them inside him to stretch him further. There are short cries of pleasure as he brushes his prostate, but concentrating on that isn’t his priority right now. He wants him desperate and begging and fucked-out by the end of this. 

“Please, please, more,” Armand breathes, soft enough that a human couldn’t hear it.

“What was that?” Lestat asks, pulling at his hair. It’s soft, even with how tangled it’s got between the fighting and the fucking.

He whinges, rocking his hips against his hand. “More! I need you to fuck me!” he almost shouts.

Lestat adds a third finger and increases the speed, and Armand is writhing between his hands. It’s  _ beautiful _ . He could watch him like this forever, helpless and wanting and all for  _ him _ . “Your cock, Lestat, give me your cock,” he whines, reaching for his shoulders to support himself. 

“You aren’t worthy of it,” Lestat snaps, pulling out his hand and wiping it off on Armand’s thigh. He starts to turn away, but Armand grabs him by his calves to keep him there, kissing his hipbone through his trousers.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” Armand snarls. 

“No, you won’t,” Lestat mocks him. “Who else would have you? You may have the theatre under your spell, but they don’t see  _ you _ . They see some mythical figure. If they knew who you really are, that you’re even worse than your lies, they’d turn on you in an instant.”

Armand tries to lash out, and Lestat presses his arms down above his head. “Louis would have me,” he snipes.

Lestat stops cold. “You killed Claudia. He wouldn’t have you.”

He chuckles softly beneath him. “I already fucked him, Lestat.” His head tilts. “I seduced him. And it was  _ so easy _ .”

Lestat’s expression turns into something cold and furious. He lines up his cock with his entrance. “Louis is  _ mine _ .”

“Apparently not. He left, didn’t he?” Armand whispers.

Lestat presses hard into him, and Armand lets out a pained cry, slightly strangled. He’s rough right from the get-go, and Armand’s hips move to meet him, his cock bouncing against Lestat’s lower abdomen. He angles his thrusts, and Armand’s eyes glaze over, rolled back in his head. He presses his hand to his belly to keep him down. His stokes are fast and long, pulling almost completely out of him then pressing in to the hilt. Armand looks physically rattled with the force of it, clinging to him tightly. 

The pressure on his cock, the speed and friction, has Lestat losing control rapidly. Every sound he makes is lewd and desperate. Armand fights off his arm and pushes him back. Lestat’s cock slips out, but then Armand straddles him and sinks down onto it again, lifting and lowering himself down. His hips roll against him, grinding against his balls, and he’s sensitive, so sensitive, every move increasing the tension building in his groin.

“Fuck me, Lestat,” Armand gasps. “Fuck me.” As if his cock isn’t already all the way inside him, his hips bouncing up to meet him. He slaps his ass again, and Armand’s back arches, pushing out his chest. Lestat wants to peel off his shirt to latch his mouth onto the nipple beneath. Another slap. “Yes, yes, that’s good, God, you’re so good, Lestat…” He sits up to kiss him hard, and the sudden, slight change of angle has stars bursting behind his eyes, Armand’s moans coming thick and fast. “Cum inside me,” he whispers in his ear. “I want you inside me. I want to feel you.”

And he  _ wants to _ . He wants that possessive feeling of being inside him, lingering there, wants Armand to know that he may have won the battle here tonight, but the war will be his. No matter what he does, what he drives him to do, Lestat will win. If one of them needs the other, it will be Armand still wanting him. Lestat bites at his earlobe, and Armand’s eyes widen. “I’m gonna cum, Lestat…”

He uses the leverage from sitting up to speed up again, biting Armand’s shoulder through his shirt. He can feel the fabric tear beneath his teeth, taste the cotton as it’s soaked with blood. Armand cums across their bellies with a loud cry, his face buried in Lestat’s hair, tightening around him. It takes Lestat a moment longer, but the pressure is too much to hold out on, and he feels his cum filling him. He pulls out of him, still slightly hard, and reaches down to wipe Armand’s cum from his shirt. There’s still a stain where it landed, but Lestat pulls back to smear it across his face. Armand gapes at him in pure shock, reaching up and touching it. “You’re disgusting,” he complains. 

“I’m just giving you what you deserve,” Lestat replies. And he wants every fantasy he’s imagined, he’s desperate for it. Armand is a good fuck, a  _ really _ good fuck. If he weren’t the type to cut off his nose to spite his face, he’d stay and keep him prisoner, keep him on the end of his cock until he can’t live without him. He’d get what he wants. But he’s too petty to play the long game, to let him have what he wants at all. He given too much already. He stands and begins putting on his trousers.

Armand watches him, confused. “Lestat?”

“Goodbye, Armand,” he says.

“What?”

“Goodbye.”

“What do you mean goodbye?” He laughs, but it’s startled and unsure. “You aren’t leaving. You have nowhere to go.”

“Back to New Orleans, of course.”

“What is there for you there? The sad ghosts of your dead child and the man who left you?” he protests.

“Yes. My memories, Armand. Far better company than you.”

He struggles to get to his feet, unsteady from how rough they were. “You can’t  _ leave me _ !” 

“Yes, I can,” he replies. Armand grabs his wrist.

“Don’t go, Lestat, you can’t, you can’t leave, you can’t go…”

He slaps his wrist away. “You killed Claudia and drove Louis away from me forever. If you think one good fuck can make up for that, you’re even more insane than I thought you were to begin with.”

Armand leans in, trying to kiss him again, but Lestat dodges out of the way. “You aren’t going anywhere!” he snarls, grabbing him by his shirt. Lestat laughs, shaking his head. Armand’s face twists into something dark and distorted, as pushes him towards the edge of the roof, and he feels a sudden tightness in his throat. Most of it is flat, but the edges are angled, and he’s only drunk a little of Armand’s blood. Not enough to truly revive him, not yet. His legs are shaking as they struggle to find purchase. “Stay with me or die, Lestat,” he hisses.

A sudden feeling of acceptance washes over him. It’s the same feeling he had as he stood here before, on the edge of his doom. The fall wouldn’t kill him, but it would wound him, and he couldn’t escape before sunrise, not when it is so close. It would be slow, hours of agony before everything he is is turned to ashes. Continuing to live would be a lifetime of loneliness. He remembers Gabrielle, her face so much like his own, eyes filled with joy and maternal tenderness as she left him. She left him. She might not even realise it for centuries if he were to be left to the sun. The edge of his lips quirks up. If he dies, he dies, and Armand will be denied forever the companion he’s craved. If he lives, it’s yet another victory. “Go to hell,” he tells him.

Armand is a dark angel of fury as he tosses him from the side of the building. Lestat tries to find something to hold to, a handhold, a window ledge, but he isn’t strong enough to maintain his grip against the momentum. He falls and falls, weightless for a long, silent moment, until his body smashes into the ground with the sickening crunch of breaking bone. Above him, he sees Armand’s pale face against the slowly paling sky peering down at him, then turn away. His entire body feels as though it is already ablaze. He closes his eyes, trying to muster the strength to move, to crawl somewhere safe for the night, but every attempt he makes only hurts more. He’s never been good at pain. He’s always avoided it. When he opens his eyes again to look at the sky, it isn’t Armand standing over him anymore. Marius gathers him into his arms, and together they take flight.


End file.
